We tested 42 USB 3.0 memory sticks with a storage capacity of at least 32 GB. As one might have expected, transfer speeds vary greatly, ranging from painfully slow to lightning fast. Which one should you buy?

Around two years ago, when we last performed a large round-up of USB 3.0 memory sticks, we came to a rather interesting conclusion: during some tests, the best stick was over ten times as fast as the slowest one. While the average consumer might think that a "USB 3.0" label on the packaging is synonymous with "high-speed stick", this didn't exactly turn out to be the case in practice. As those who skipped ahead to the conclusion of this new test will already know, such a speed delta still exists today. A USB 3.0 interface, which is the rule rather than the exception anno 2015, only reveals that the stick utilizes the USB 3.0 protocol, and does not reveal any information on the incorporated controller and memory chips. As such, there's absolutely no guarantee that the stick will be capable of even approaching USB 3.0's maximum theoretical throughput of around 480 MB/s.